Generally, semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as computers, cellular phones, personal computing devices, and many other applications. Home, industrial, and automotive devices that, in the past, comprised only mechanical components now have electronic parts that require semiconductor devices, for example.
There is a trend in the semiconductor industry towards scaling. Scaling requires reduction in component size, for example, by reducing the size of features, e.g., the circuits, elements, conductive lines, and vias of semiconductor devices, in order to increase performance of the semiconductor devices while increasing density. The minimum feature size of semiconductor devices has steadily decreased over time. However, as features of semiconductor devices become smaller, it becomes more difficult to aggressively scale all features to achieve the necessary shrink in die size. Hence, alternative strategies to scaling are needed.
One way to achieve scaling without reducing feature size is to improve design of circuits to overcome the limitations introduced by processes. One way of improving circuits requires improving the layout of the circuits. Improvements in layout design can help share the burden of scaling. However, layout changes are susceptible to yield loss arising from electrical shorts etc. Hence, what are needed are layout changes to achieve scaling without compromising process yield.